by ·Comments Off on Anatomy of a Murder (1959, Otto Preminger)

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an underdog law team winning a defense case that they maybe should’ve lost.

Jimmy and his clients:

Jimmy takes the case of killer Ben Gazzara, who murdered the rapist of his wife Lee Remick. Now the prosecution (“Mitch” at first, until non-country lawyer George C. Scott takes over) wants to prove that Ben definitely shot the bartender, and anyway his wife is too hot for this town so she had it coming, and the defense (incl. underpaid secretary Eve Arden) wants to prove that the bartender is a rapist and he had it coming.

Lee and the defense team:

A couple far-fetched characters: Arthur O’Connell (Elvis’s dad/uncle in Kissin’ Cousins) is a hopeless drunk ex-lawyer who sobers up instantly and permanently to help Jimmy on the big case. And the manager at the bar (Kathryn Grant, dealer/spy of The Phenix City Story) is secretly the dead man’s daughter, a mess that George Scott steps in during cross-examination after she comes forth to help the defense.

The moment George steps in it:

Trounced by Ben-Hur at the oscars, but at least Duke Ellington won all the grammies. Classic orchestral or modern drone scores can be good sometimes, but most film directors should simply seek out the most artistically credible jazz band that will answer their phone calls.

Duke and Jimmy jamming:

Sean Gilman: “arty of the irst art”.

Sallitt:

One of Preminger’s big contributions here is his total comfort with the idea that the good guys and their mission are more or less on the side of evil (incarnated by Ben Gazzara), and their opponents are trying to do society a big favor by locking Gazzara up.

by ·Comments Off on Lake Michigan Monster (2018, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews)

Very grateful that people are putting in excessive amounts of effort to make extremely silly movies. I laughed every time the soundtrack plays “what do you do with a drunken sailor,” and after watching Guy Maddin movies and reading Cinema Scope for 20 years, my brain’s pleasure sensors light up from this Canadian-adjacent content.

I guess Ryland pretends to be rich and assembles a team to find the monster, and I guess it kills team member Sean “Nessy” Shaughnessy during their third mission. There’s not much more I can tell you, since the Mets were getting trounced in game 3 of the NLCS and I was unevenly splitting my attention between these two things and drinking pumpkin beer.

by ·Comments Off on Roger & Me (1989, Michael Moore)

It’s fun to see the pre-Awful Truth days when every corporate headquarters didn’t have an Official Michael Moore Policy and when Moore was thrown out of an event not because of who he is but because one of Ralph Nader’s relatives was with him. It’s also fun to see what a good movie Moore can make when he devotes all his time and energy to a single cause instead of bouncing from one populist hot topic to the next (Columbine, Fahrenheit) or tackling issues that are too large to fit in a movie (Sicko). He stays (mostly) in Michigan, covers a couple years’ worth of plant closings, visits and revisits local people (the eviction deputy, for one) and tries to get answers from (and stir up debate against) the corporate overlords and policies seen to be the cause of the problems. We’d been meaning to watch this for a long time, and thought the week of G.M.’s collapse (and Moore’s latest email about it) made for good timing.